From an employer point of view, an applicant with a good degree (Honours or not) is better than someone with a less "good" degree or no degree at all for job positions where degrees would be normally required. Everywhere in the world, you can't legally work as a medical doctor without a degree, the same for a lawyer or a teacher in the public school system.

ESL is a bit different. Most providers are private school owners with smaller schools and relatively low funding. That's why they would try to minimize expenses and will not/cannot pay salaries that really reflect the academic quality of the teachers they hire. Hence, they will also employ people without degrees and other proper teaching qualifications.

In China, there is an ESL job market that includes both public and private employers. Mostly, the salaries levels they have do not really discriminate between degree and non-degree holders. Still, some unis and colleges employ FTs who are non-degree holders but receive a similar salary that a degree holder would get. That's quite unfair and should not happen; the same for private operations.

There are a number of good reasons for it:

- ESL teaching is more than "basic English teaching" (conversation). It includes areas like Reading and Writing a non-degree holder could not really teach. For a number of obvious reasons, it is more efficient for an employer to employ an FT with appropriate qualifications who can cover everything from a conversation class to Academic Writing, for example.

- From a student perspective, professional teachers who love their job are those they desire. And they will feel shocked if they find out they have an idiot standing in front of them whose pronunciation is some kind of native linguistic sub-standard from Alabama or Northern England that will make thewm fail in the exams. They or their parents will then blame the school for employing such an idiot.

- Professional ESL teachers must possess of a larger number of competencies that a non-degree holder cannot offer. In Academic Writing, for example, you must be able to explain not only paragraph and essay structure but also concepts that a non-degree holder has never heard of.

In the case of IELTS Yunheng, degree holders and a couple of non-degree holders were sent to Chinese middle schools to teach ESL. Some of them may not have qualified because of their often unintelligible accents (in case of certain West Africans whose native African languages are also tonal languages like Chinese (especially when they come from Nigeria)) despite the fact that they are degree holders. Others may be native speakers but some of them may not have degrees and know nothing about the language they teach and how to teach.

There are many backward places in China like that where IELTS Yuncheng operates. It's places where the better qualified FTS most likely won't go and where it may be a problem to fill vacancies that exist for FTs. Also, the academic standards in Chinese education are really low compared to the rest opf the world. Also, IELTS Yuncheng served customers outside the IELTS track. For iELTS itself, it's not enough to teach only "basic English"; students preparing for that exam are required to have a high level of proficiency in all areas of English language skills, and it's certainly not "only" about conversation (speaking practice).

Make no mistake, the days when the Chinese employed almost everybody to teach English, are long gone by. They now can afford to be more picky and choose the suitable candidate applying for a job. Requirements on the initial qualifications of the applicant have also become higher, and everyone continuing to dream the dream of a degree-less native speaker without the necessary academic and professional teaching qualifications (oh, eye that's China....) will soon learn that he is not in demand anymore. He will perhaps then bake pies with flies that nobody wants and hopefully be shown the door and told to piss off!